Consommé potato chips are a bit of peculiarity in Japan. They’re basically Japan’s equivalent to BBQ flavor in Western countries in terms of prevalence. The taste isn’t far off either, but consommé chips are much less spicy and deliver more in the savory department, with a more meaty and tomatoey taste overall.

Consommé is an admittedly a much classier sounding flavor, however, being based on a very classy French soup that’s made by simmering meat and vegetables and repeatedly filtering out the fats and other “impurities” to make a clear, light, yet flavorful broth.

Consommé was historically a very inefficient soup to make, requiring a fair amount of meat to yield a relatively small amount of soup after all the filtering, thus making it something of a luxury to consume. The chips bearing its simulated flavor, however, have always been quite simple and cheap…until now.

Koikeya, in continuing with their Pride Potato series that uses only domestic ingredients, have announced the “most luxurious consommé potato chips ever” in what they are calling Imperial Consommé.

This flavor is based on a consommé created using three of Japan’s most famous meats and seafoods; wagyu beef, ise ebi lobster, and scallops. These are simmered with vegetables and a white wine for added flavor and then all are purified into their finest elements.

The packaging of Imperial Consommé is meant to reflect such a flavor as well, using a pink gold color representing the luxurious foods simmering into a tomato-reddened broth.

Feelings about the release were mixed, with some applauding the advances in flavoring. Others suspect it to be a scheme to keep prices high while reducing the amount of chips you get in a bag. Some people also had understandable reservations about the name.

“I’d try those once.”

“I’m not big into chips, but those look pretty impressive.”

“Imperial Consommé seems kind of insensitive, Legendary Consommé would have been a better name.”

“This is just to justify a higher price per chip. I’m not buying it.”

“One bag will probably be over 500 yen, but I’ll still try it at least once.”

“Emperor’s Consommé perhaps?”

“These are luxurious, but when I was a kid a bag of chips had twice as much inside as they do now.”

“I’d rather have Slave Consommé with just salt at half the price and sold in a torn plastic shopping bag.”

Although technically correct in terms of a chip “fit for an emperor,” “imperial” probably isn’t the best choice for a name, especially considering Japan’s past which continues to carry hard feelings in the area today.

And as for the “bag of air” conspiracy, that’s been going on for years now. If Koikeya wanted to pull a flim-flam and reduce the chip content, they could have done than countless times already with their truffle salt flavor in 2012, or even their wacky milk and toast flavored chips last year.

But at the moment no price is announced for Koikeya Pride Potato Imperial Consommé, so we’ll need to wait until they hit convenience store shelves on 20 November and then supermarkets and elsewhere in Japan on Nov 27. Until then, we’ll all have to make due with the plain old colonized consommé chips we have now.